HISTORY

Colonial Heritage

Spain received the island of Trinidad as part of the fief of
Christopher Columbus and controlled the island for nearly 300 years (see
The European Settlements, ch. 1). The Spaniards subdued and enslaved the
native Caribs and Arawaks but until the late 1700s paid little attention
to Trinidad as other ventures were more profitable. As a result,
Trinidad's population was only 2,763 in 1783. Amerindians composed 74
percent of that total (2,032). Although African slaves were first
imported in 1517, they constituted only 11 percent of the population
(310) in 1783. Indeed, the slave total was barely larger than the 295
free nonwhites who had emigrated from other islands. The remaining 126
Trinidadians were white.

In an effort to make Trinidad more profitable, the Spanish opened the
island to immigration in 1776 and allowed Roman Catholic planters from
other Eastern Caribbean islands to establish sugar plantations. Because
French Catholic planters on the islands that had been granted to Britain
after the Seven Years' War (1756-63) were subject to religious and
political discrimination, they were attracted by Spanish promises of
land grants and tax concessions in Trinidad. In seeking immigrants,
Trinidad linked landownership to the ownership of slaves; the more
slaves, the more land. Land grants were also given to free nonwhite
immigrants, and all landed immigrants were offered citizenship rights
after five years. As a result of this new policy, thousands of French
planters and their slaves emigrated to the island in the 1780s and
1790s. By 1797 the demographic structure of the island had changed
completely. The population had expanded dramatically to 17,718, about 56
percent of whom were slaves. There were also 4,476 free nonwhites and
2,151 whites. The Amerindian community declined by 50 percent from the
level achieved 14 years earlier and represented only 6 percent of the
total population. As of 1797, there were hundreds of sugar, coffee, and
cotton plantations producing for export (see Growth and Structure of the
Economy, this ch.).

The British, who were at war with Spain and France, conquered
Trinidad in 1797 during the Caribbean unrest that followed the French
Revolution. Trinidad was formally ceded to Britain in 1802. After
debating how to govern the new island, the British finally decided on
crown colony (see Glossary) rule under a governor (see Political
Traditions, ch. 1). As this was occurring, investors and colonists
expanded the sugar plantations to take advantage of high sugar prices.
During the first five years of British rule, the number of sugar estates
increased markedly. The British census of 1803 counted 28,000 people, a
tenfold increase in 20 years; of these, there were 20,464 slaves, 5,275
free nonwhites, and 2,261 whites. About half of the free people and most
of the slaves spoke French, and the rest of the population was divided
between Spanish and English speakers. The Amerindian population
continued to decline, with several hundred members scattered in rural
settlements.

A decade after slavery was abolished in 1834, the British government
gave permission for the colonies to import indentured labor from India
to work on the plantations. Throughout the remainder of the century,
Trinidad's population growth came primarily from East Indian laborers.
By 1871 there were 27,425 East Indians, approximately 22 percent of the
population of Trinidad and Tobago; by 1911 that figure had grown to
110,911, or about 33 percent of all residents of the islands. Small
numbers of Chinese, Portuguese, and other groups also immigrated,
contributing to the multiracial character of the island.

Tobago, Robinson Crusoe's island, changed hands twenty-two times
between 1626 and 1814, as various European countries tried to secure
possession of its safe anchorages. Its population in 1791 was 15,102,
about 94 percent of whom were slaves. The British finally acquired
Tobago permanently in 1814, after several previous attempts to conquer
the island. The British continued to govern through a local assembly
that they had installed during an earlier conquest of Tobago in 1763.
Under this arrangement, political control rested with a number of
British civil servants and the assembly, elected by a tiny electorate
and supported by the sugar plantations.

By the late nineteenth century, Trinidad and Tobago were no longer
profitable colonies because sugar was being produced more cheaply
elsewhere. In 1889 the British government united Trinidad and Tobago in
an effort to economize on government expenses and to solve the economic
problems of the islands. In 1898 Tobago became a ward of Trinidad,
thereby losing its local assembly, which was not reinstated until 1980.
Subsequently, Britain ruled Trinidad and Tobago as a crown colony until
1956. Between 1889 and 1924, the government of Trinidad and Tobago
included, in addition to its governor, a wholly appointed Legislative
Council. The first step toward self-government was taken in 1925 when
there were limited elections to the Legislative Council and to the
governor's Executive Council.

As noted, the populations of both Trinidad and Tobago owe their main
origins to massive eighteenth- and nineteenth-century importations of
African slaves and East Indian indentured servants who were needed to
work on the sugar plantations. When the sugar industry declined,
unemployment became widespread. In the early twentieth century, oil
replaced sugar as the major export; oil is a capital-intensive industry,
however, and it did not solve the problem of unemployment in Trinidad
and Tobago.

The labor movement began to assume importance after World War I,
spurred by the return of Trinidadians who had fought with the British
armed forces. The most important of these was Captain Andrew Arthur
Cipriani, a white man of Corsican descent, who had served as commander
of the West India Regiment. Cipriani resented the fact that the West
India Regiment was not allowed to fight for the British Empire but
instead was sent to Egypt, where its forces served as labor battalions.
Upon his return to Trinidad, Cipriani organized the masses, giving them
national pride and teaching them to oppose colonialism. He revitalized
the Trinidad Workingman's Association, which was renamed the Trinidad
Labour Party (TLP) in 1934; by 1936 the TLP had 125,000 members. Because
Cipriani was white, he was able to transcend the black-East Indian
racial dichotomy and became known as "the champion of the barefoot
man." In the first elections held for the Legislative Council,
Cipriani was elected in 1925 and remained a member until his death in
1945. He was also elected mayor of Port-of-Spain eight times. In these
two offices, Cipriani struggled against racial discrimination and fought
for constitutional reform, universal suffrage, and better rights for
workers.

During the 1930s, Trinidad and Tobago suffered severely from the
effects of the worldwide depression. Living standards deteriorated as
workers were laid off from the plantations. The situation was aggravated
by unjust labor practices. Wages on the sugar estates and in the oil
fields were kept low while shareholder dividends in London rose. Workers
moved away from Cipriani's moderate policies, and the labor movement
became radicalized. Between 1934 and 1937, there were strikes and riots
on the sugar plantations and in the oil fields throughout the Caribbean.
Tubal Uriah Butler, a black Grenadian who had been expelled from the TLP
for extremism, emerged as the leader of the black oil workers, who were
the best paid and most politicized laborers on the island. Butler called
for racial unity among black workers and organized strikes, heading a
highly personalized party that was known as the "Butler
Party." Although the British labeled Butler as a "fanatical
Negro" during the 1930s, Trinidad and Tobago has since recognized
him as a man who sensitized the common man to the evils of colonialism.
The strikes in Trinidad and Tobago in the 1930s included many incidents
of racial violence, culminating in twelve deaths and over fifty injuries
in 1937.

The British responded by deploying marines from Barbados and
appointing two successive commissions from London to investigate the
causes of the riots in Trinidad and Tobago and elsewhere in the
Caribbean. Both commissions noted the low wages and poor working
conditions throughout the region. The second commission, chaired by Lord
Moyne, which completed its report in 1940, was very critical of the
British colonial system in the Caribbean and recommended housing
construction, agricultural diversification, more representative
government for the islands, and promotion of a middle class in
preparation for eventual self-government (see Labor Organizations, ch.
1). Although the Moyne Commission's findings were not made public until
after World War II, some of its recommendations were put into effect
under the Colonial Development Welfare Act of 1940.

The British government had encouraged the formation of trade unions
in the belief that labor organization would prevent labor unrest. After
the islandwide strikes of 1937, Butler succeeded Cipriani as the leader
of the Trinidadian labor movement. Butler's associate, Adrian Cola
Rienzi, an East Indian, organized both oil workers under the Oilfield
Workers Trade Union (OWTU) and the sugar workers under the All Trinidad
Sugar Estates and Factory Workers Trade Union (ATSE/FWTU). Railroad and
construction workers were organized under the Federated Workers Trade
Union (FWTU), and a number of smaller unions were also formed.

Following a recommendation of the Moyne Commission, government was
made more representative. Constitutional reform in 1925 had provided for
six elected members on the twenty-five-member Legislative Council, but
franchise restrictions limited voters in the 1925 election to 6 percent
of the population. In April 1941, the number of unofficial elected
members on the Legislative Council and the governor's Executive Council
was increased, giving the elected members a majority. Some of these
elected members were included on official committees and the governor's
Executive Council, although the governor retained ultimate authority and
veto power.

Trinidad and Tobago had been profoundly changed by World War II. For
the first time since British annexation, the islands were widely exposed
to another foreign influence. The 1941 Lend-Lease Agreement (also called
the Bases-for-Destroyers Agreement) between the United States and
Britain included ninety-nine-year leases of the deepwater harbor at
Chaguaramas to the United States Navy and of Waller Field in central
Trinidad to the United States Army (see Historical Background, ch. 7).
Many United States and Canadian personnel were brought in to work at
these bases, and thousands of Trinidadian workers were employed at the
bases for higher wages under better conditions than ever before (see
Patterns of Development, this ch.). As a result, by the end of World War
II many Trinidadians had become used to a higher standard of living and
wanted to keep it.

Although the election in 1946 was the first under universal adult
suffrage, less than half of the registered voters cast ballots. The
trade unions did not consolidate into a cohesive political entity. The
labor vote fragmented, as blacks and East Indians divided and as racial
slurs became a common part of campaign rhetoric. Butler, who had been
detained throughout the war, was released from jail and campaigned for
the Legislative Council, but he was defeated by Albert Gomes, a trade
unionist of Portuguese descent. The labor movement was unable to gain a
majority because no leader could command the widespread support of both
the blacks and the East Indians, a pattern that continued throughout the
ensuing forty years. The middle class--comprising primarily blacks and a
smaller number of East Indians--came to dominate the political scene in
the crucial elections that led to independence and has dominated it into
the late 1980s.